A Result Of Reaganomics?-Is the Giffords Shooting a New Kind of American Murder?

[kpete]

Is the Giffords Shooting a New Kind of American Murder?
by Mark Ames
January 10, 2011, 5:38 PM


Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, Arizona, has been variously described as an “assassination” and a “shooting rampage”—but which one is it?

This may seem like a semantic quibble, but what occurred in that Safeway supermarket appears to be an entirely new type of American murder: a hybrid of political assassination, of the sort that plagued America in the 1960s and 70s, and a “going postal” rampage massacre, of the kind that first appeared in the mid- to late-1980s, with the rise of Reaganomics inequalities and the deterioration of workplace culture.


...........

Now, it seems, we have the worst of both worlds: the chaos that Reagan snuffed out, and the socioeconomic violence his policies produced. And that might explain why we just experienced the worst of all murder crimes: a political assassination-rampage massacre.

The events of this weekend seem incomprehensible to us now; someday, with the benefit of hindsight, they may strike us as all too inevitable. For now, however, there is only one question to ask: Was Saturday’s hybrid assassination-rampage a one-off, or is this new species of American murder going to become a defining symbol of our sorry era?

the rest:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/01/is-the-giffords-shooting-a-new-kind-of-american-murder.html

[Gregorian]

1. Huh. Almost exactlly what I posted yesterday. Maybe I'm not so stupid after all.

I think this is the one thing that has trickled down. A sort of abandonment of society that the Reagan styled conservatives have promulgated. There is more, but it's not something people want to hear about. Nor is there anything we can do about that part now. We made ourselves a fast and scattered society. We work for a mortgage, not a living. We have no time to spend truly nurturing one another.

We are paying a price for being irresponsible beings. It did start before Reagan. It started after WW2 when we gave up the lives we had for convenience.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. It accelerated under Reagan.

Cutting mental health care, work speedups, busting the Air Traffic Controllers' union, yes.

People didn't go postal very often until Reagan destroyed a lot of things in this country. Like the middle class, job security.

I hope this will lead to a discussion about mental health care, and about universal health care in this country.

[conspirator]

3. That and also, let's not forget that we are at the end of the fourth turn of generations

we are reaching the boiling point of a revolution